Davit,
All good suggestions and information. I take a powder magnesium supplement that also has calicum and other assorted vitamins. I'm a vitamin nerd. Goes well with being a fitness addict.
You asked if I am a counter. I was a huge counter when I was in my teens and even into my 20's. Now the OCD I get is unwanted thoughts or even weird thoughts or songs that I like and keep playing in my head. When the mortality thought gets stuck in my head, it can cause panic due to the lack of control over destiny.
On counting, again, I remember counting a lot when my Mother was close to dying in the hospital of cancer. This was 1976. I remember visiting her and doing or touching something 4 times to make something even. She thought it was cute, but OCD was not popular back then in the '70's. Not sure if I developed it due to her illness or if it occurred before.
I do remember as a child, if I did not hear something someone said, I felt something bad would happen if I did not ask them to repeat it. I still get caught up in this sometimes, especially if I don't hear what my wife says.
As for SSRI's, I was on prozac for 10 years and am glad to be off it since 2003. I frequently got anxiety and depression while using it, and I felt sluggish and did not have drive for much, including sex and exercise. Free of most meds, I am a workout machine.
Today I got by on 2.5 mg of valium, my usual vitamins, 500 mg of gaba, 100 mg of 5HTP. I also had a cup of chamomile tea on the drive home. I love chamomile.
On the meds mention where you said am I using meds to totally block out panic and anxiety. This is not what I am using it for. I use it for certain stressful situations. I know valium is not a fix-all. I don't want to use it a lot, but there are those times where my mind will not stop and valium becomes the STOP sign. I am guilty there.
Perhaps I have used it too often during certain times, but that's not the half of it. For much of the mid-to late '80's, I was on elavil and ativan. I just kept having panic attacks, whether they were out of the blue or self caused or during stress.
It was not until 1995, when I started visiting with a really good therapist, that I started to break out of the funk I was in for several years. I had so much hidden inside me, from my Mother dying when I was 10, having to see my Father suffer from loneliness for years, being picked on just for being small and Jewish, to being married to a verbally abusive person from 1989-1993
I had moments of dissociation or depersonalization long before I ever took valium.
I don't want to have to use any meds, but (there's always a but) when cornered into a panic situation, it's noce to know it's there.
Exercise has always been my go-to for anything bothering me. This is always my first choice, but I cannot always exercise where I am at any given time. Yoga and weights have been the most effective for me. It takes me to a place where anxiety does not exist.
I used to have anxiety attacks in high school. I had no idea what was happening to me. As a young child, I would wake up screaming, and no one knew why.
On turning ones mind to mush, this could be anyone. There are millions addicted to prescription drugs like pain killers, sleeing pills, and yes, valium, among others, but think they are not doing anything wrong because they are "legal" drugs. Elvis died due to complications of prescription drugs. But a doctor gave them to him, which means they were "legal." That doctor is now parodied on the Simpsons as Dr. Nick.
Our culture is being tricked into thinking drugs can help any problems from restless legs to having to take a bathroom break at a sports event; from pain to dry eyes and from high cholesterol to impotence. The commercials that sicken me the most are the ones where the person says, "I'm all Advil." Or the Lipitor one where the same actor who "diet and exercise were not enough," also appears in an Ancestry.com commercial claiming he found lost relatives.
Anyway, that's my take.
Time to feed the turtles and then yoga. I am tired because the Dallas Cowboys decided to blow a 14 point lead in the 4th quarter, and I did not get to sleep until after 12 and got up at 5:30.